Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Orbital Goblin Viewing Platform

“I never had strong sea-legs, you know?” asks the man, staring out towards the distance.

I turn my head to follow his gaze, trying to see what it is that he is looking at. But I can not see anything in particular.

“But after that light hit the water, after the waves came and the ships rose and people flew from left to right, many of them into the drink, something changed in my body.”

He stares off with vacant eyes for a while. I wait.

“When it was all said and done, I just… I don’t know. I spent the rest of my life aboard ships. Twenty years after that incident and since that day, I never shook once on any boat, in any storm, in any fight ever again. It’s just… It’s just that after that, after what I saw, after I felt the heat of that pressure-wave, there was nothing left in the ocean that could frighten me.”

I stare.

I realize that the retired sailor isn’t looking at anything on the surface of the world. His eyes are locked towards the sky, back there, where it meets the horizon.

“— But the sky?” he asks. “It terrifies me. You can’t see what’s hiding down in the ocean, in the dark. So you can just pretend nothing is there. But the sky? I saw it. I know what’s up there.

I saw it.

I still see it, every time I close my eyes.

It’s so bright.”

I realize that he hasn’t blinked yet.